Chapter 6: Good King Wenceslas

It was hard to concentrate when she knew she could be attacked at any moment. But Amy had worked under worse conditions—although she couldn’t think of any right now…

She was struggling to find out anything about the sculpture beyond the fact it was called Alliance and had a number of impressive arty parts put together by its famous French designer. Useful information, however, was at a premium. How was it powered? What determined the pulsation of its lights and how could one access that? How the hell did Corelia pull this off—and then what went wrong?

Had her hack somehow caused a power surge? Perhaps the person lurking beside the sculpture had strived to outdo her, to aim for a more vast and impressive target? Had they triggered the blackout deliberately, or had they intended to light up another target? One where their friends were now lurking to observe the chaos from above…

Amy struggled to recall the seconds before the blackout came down. Had something gone wrong with the library? She remembered thinking the library looked brighter, but she had been too fixated on watching Alliance to properly notice. Maybe the hack had failed before it had even started. Or maybe she was clutching at straws, but this was the only avenue for her to pursue right now.

Something had tripped something important somewhere—and that something could be in the building she now occupied. If she wanted to solve this, she had to take a chance and she had to do it fast.

‘There you are.’

Amy nearly jumped out of her skin as a bright light covered her and a bright voice came with it. He lowered the light and Amy could see he was a young man with ginger hair and beard, and glasses. Another librarian. How many of these cheerful guardians were there?

‘Sorry I scared you,’ he continued. ‘We’re trying to keep everyone downstairs.’

‘I think your building has been hacked to cause a power surge that has disabled the power grid.’

The man blinked at her. ‘Right…’

‘Please show me your environmental controls.’

She shoved her fingers in the inside pocket of her satchel and pulled out one of her old business cards, the ones that still said ‘police consultant’. The man took it to inspect, then nodded decisively.

‘Of course. Though obviously they’re turned off, because of the power…’

‘Yes, obviously,’ Amy said, even as she cringed internally. Of course they were off. Everything was off. How could she reset a system that had no power flowing to it?

Reset.

It was possible that there was a reset button, one that would undo whatever mess had been done and allow the people monitoring the power grid to turn everything back on. Possible but not likely. But she had to see for herself. She had to run through all the options before she put her head in her hands and cried.

‘I’ll take you there now.’

Amy put on her most serious, problem-solving face and got up off the floor. Following her librarian friend and his very bright torch, she tried not to think about whether the perpetrator was still in the building. At least she wasn’t alone now. At least Cerys had Jason’s back outside.

The librarian stopped in front of a door labelled ‘Staff Only’ and keyed in a code. Through that door, they were more doors, and he stopped at the last one. The enclosed space of the corridor made the light bounce around in weird echoes, and Amy suddenly felt trapped. She took a breath, then another. Small spaces had never been a problem before. She could do this. Get it together.

Opening up the door, the librarian reflexively took a step back at the light that spilled out of the tiny room. Amy peered round him—and caught sight of two teen boys sitting on the floor around a laptop and a two-litre bottle of cider.

The one closest reacted first, picking up the bottle and drawing back his arm. Amy yanked on the librarian’s hand, hauling him back. He was still holding on to the door handle and the door came with him, slamming closed as the bottle thudded against it.

‘We need backup,’ the librarian said, wide eyed and dismayed.

Amy shook her head. There was no time. She took out her tablet and turned on the Bluetooth. She immediately found two open connections and held the tablet up to her new friend. He shook his head, looking puzzled.

She called up her Bluetooth sniffer app and forced the two devices to open up to her. The whole process was over in just a couple of seconds. She grinned. They really were infant hackers if their phone security was this terrible.

She knocked on the door three times.

‘Alex Matthews. Kieran Davies. Let me in and maybe I won’t doxx you.’

Silence. She crossed her fingers, hoping against hope that she had connected to the right devices and wasn’t making an arse of herself by calling out the wrong people.

‘You have ten seconds before I’m calling your mothers. Ten…nine…eight—’

The door opened immediately, and the one who her tablet identified as Kieran stood in the doorway.

‘How did you do that?’ he asked, his voice full of both fear and awe.

‘First, you tell me how you took out the power and we fix it.’

‘It wasn’t us,’ Alex said, not looking up from his laptop, seething with anger. ‘Simon fucked up somehow. He only wanted to turn the lights on and off, put on a show.’

‘You certainly did that,’ Amy said, dryly.

Alex’s scowl deepened, as he gestured to the laptop. ‘I have his hack here. But when the power cut out, we lost the connection to the environmental controls. What a fucking mess.’

Amy took in the code with one glance, winced—and then saw the industrial power pack attached to the laptop.

‘I’m going to need your 1-Up,’ she said.